THURSDAY, December 7
8PM From Monteverdi to Bergman
TENET will perform works by Monteverdi, and soprano Lucy Shelton will perform a work by Luciano Berio, followed by a short dance film collaboration by Ingmar Bergman and Donya Feuer, “De Fördömda Kvinnornas Dans”
A part of Monteverdi at 450: Experiments in Sound, Image, and Movementhttp://italianacademy.columbia.edu/event/monteverdi-450-experiments-sound-image-and-movement
VENUE: The Italian Academy
ADMISSION: Free

SATURDAY, December 9
8PM Dennis Russell Davies & Maki Namekawa: Celebrating Philip Glass
Two of Philip Glass’ closest collaborators and friends, Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, perform an all-Glass recital of music for two pianos and piano four-hands.
The program includes the two-piano suite from Glass’ opera Les Enfants Terribles, a selection of music for piano-four hands including “The Chase” from Orphée, the New York premiere of the musical interlude from The Voyage, and “Stokes,” as well as Glass’ dynamic “Four Movements for Two Pianos.”http://roulette.org/event/celebrating-philip-glass-at-80-the-namekawa-davies-piano-duo/
VENUE: Roulette
ADMISSION: $15-25

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Perhaps the most startling debut albums in jazz this year were “Fly or Die,” by the trumpeter Jaimie Branch, and “Mannequins,” by the drummer Kate Gentile. Ms. Gentile plays original compositions that are at once grimy and resonant, tightly layered and charged with momentum. Ms. Branch uses extended technique and blustery abstraction to a dizzying effect.

A mentor to Ms. Branch, the flutist Nicole Mitchell, 50, had a banner year herself. The highlight was “Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds,” an album recorded with her Black Earth Ensemble, an eight-piece band playing percussion, strings and reeds from traditions across the globe. The suite bears the markings of communal expression, with a sound that’s grounded and raw.

The cellist Tomeka Reid, another acolyte of Ms. Mitchell’s, spent her year playing high-profile gigs with her own projects as well as with luminaries like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell. She released an album with the saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and one with Hear in Now, a powerful trio of female string players.

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Satoko Fujii Celebrates Her 60th Birthday by Releasing One New CD Each Month in 2018

To celebrate her own 60th birthday, Fujii, already a prolific bandleader with more than 80 releases to her name, will intensify her recording schedule, releasing one CD a month for all of 2018. Rather than using her kanreki year to look back at a career that has spanned more than 30 years, Fujii will emphasize new works for current projects, debut special projects, and introduce new working bands in an unprecedented 12-month spree of new releases. “I probably should think and notice that I am not young anymore,” she says, “but I just keep doing what I want to do.”

The pulse of any fan of Fujii’s unique musical vision will quicken at the thought of the anticipated albums. The celebration kicks off in January with Satoko Fujii: Solo (Libra), a live recording from the acoustically rich Yume Mikan Hall in Yawatahama, Japan. In a mesmerizing concert, she performed without a set list, simply improvising and playing compositions as they arose in the flow of the music.

Two releases by current ensembles will follow. In February, Atody Man (Circum Libra), the fourth release from KAZE, the collaborative group with trumpeters Natsuki Tamura and Christian Pruvost and drummer Peter Orins, will feature more fiercely energetic improvising from the international quartet. March will see the releases of Ninety-Nine Years (Libra), the latest from Orchestra Berlin. A new one from Orchestra Tokyo is also planned.

In addition, the dozen new releases will include the recording debuts of a new piano-bass-drums trio and This Is It!, a trio featuring Fujii with Natsuki Tamura on trumpet and Takashi Itani on percussion. Also slated is Intelsat, a duet with Australian pianist Alister Spence and May (Long Song Records), which showcases a one-time trio with Italian soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and American bassist Joe Fonda, with whom Fujii released a critically acclaimed duo album in 2016.